For about half my professional life I have been interested in these works, securing one after another as many of them as came on the visible side of my horizon. This interest was first awakened by the study of the Ballad for Cello and Piano, Opus 13, which I was asked to play at a concert in Manchester somewhere round about 1920. The Ballad is a piece in which, for all its comparative immaturity, there are unmistakable traces of a new and highly original personality together with a good deal of fascinating intricacy. To bait the hook still more temptingly for me there was every need to practise a number of the passages both diligently and even ingeniously before it was possible to execute them with a modicum of respectability. Time has in no way staled for me the intriguing delights of this early work.